A sommelier
mixing diesel fumes and desire
a spritz of the Hudson, old bergamot, black tea, succulent figs, a cocktail that burns twice
once going down, once in the remembering
A city never forgets
It only builds taller ghosts
It keeps its ledger. We may be a thing of old, but every subway grate still exhales the perfume of stolen hours
Every bodega neon buzzes the chorus
of the song we shouldn’t have sung
My body once held promises
collapsed beneath your hands, cartographers tracing braille
across collarbones, moonlit thighs
pinned like a moth
to a wall long deserted and forgotten
You said my name was something sacred
even as your touch grew cold
against my skin
Now the space we shared is scarred
and I scrub every night
trying to wash away the scent of loss from my knuckles
Erotica is not a word but a breath, rewriting silence into a language
of bitten fruit and borrowed time
The bed is a crime scene now
You took the quiet from my bones
left echoes where my pride once lived
Our secret was a match struck too quick
bright, then blistered, then gone
What burns fast leaves the deepest scar
I leave you this
the ashes of my almost-name
the shrapnel of a life I didn’t live
Bury them deep
Goodbye is the vase I reassemble
with all the silences you gifted me
Here, in the rubble of
what if
I plant my last whisper
Let the earth keep what your arms could not
